


equilibrium, rearranged

by auxanges



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Caliginous-Flushed Vacillation, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Multi, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 03:38:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16508669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxanges/pseuds/auxanges
Summary: Checking in with your charges is, officially, the last point of contact before you retire for the day. You’ve walked to and from the connecting blocks so much you swear your feet have made little dents in the palace’s immaculate floor. AA usually opts for a formal well-wishing, whereas you and ED just kind of snipe at each other until one of you passes out.





	equilibrium, rearranged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LightReef](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightReef/gifts).



> part of an art trade with [lightingupthereef!](http://lightingupthereef.tumblr.com/) thank you for letting me play in your bodyguard au sandbox, it's so cute and i hope you like it! (1920s mob boss voice) pleasure doin business with ya

Here are the things your training covered: perimeter scans, psionic-assisted, to detect pressure anomalies. Temperature ranges and their respective dangers, arranged by caste. Sixty-three ways a pissed-off seadweller could kill you before you could so much as radio the attack. Defence. Offence. More defence. Enough math to turn your brain to goo and re-freeze it into exciting shapes. 

Here is a thing your training did not cover: the iron will required to stay awake during debriefs. 

“Cut me a little slack, already,” you grouse. You and your colleague are headed back to blocks, your pace slowed by banter and your over-the-top limp—AA stomped on your foot more than a couple times in the boardroom. 

Aradia pokes the sleeve of your uniform, creased where your cheek rested on it as you started falling asleep. “I am the very last person who should be going easy on you!” she says, which sucks because she’s right. “Do you think insurgents will give you leniency mid-palace break-in because you asked nicely?”

“Maybe if I throw in a ‘please’ they’ll be charitable and cull me first.” You tug your goggles up to rub at your eyes: twenty-hour shifts aren’t technically the longest you’ve been assigned without sleep breaks, but somewhere between inspection and next season’s diplomat roster the telltale prickle of a migraine had come a-knockin’. “I need a defuse, fuck.”

“Almost done, Sollux.” AA seizes your hand to kiss, after a comically mischievous glance behind you. 

Checking in with your charges is, officially, the last point of contact before you retire for the day. You’ve walked to and from the connecting blocks so much you swear your feet have made little dents in the palace’s immaculate floor. AA usually opts for a formal well-wishing, whereas you and ED just kind of snipe at each other until one of you passes out. 

It pays the bills. And by bills you mean your life. And by paying you mean...not having to pay, or something—

“Hey.” AA’s stopped so abruptly her raised hand almost chops you in the jugular. 

In front of you, the door to the prince’s quarters is ajar. 

Adrenaline floods you so fast it almost hurts, clearing your head of lint and cobwebs and that commercial jingle you’ve been humming all week. Two of your fingers twitch, one after the other. You tuck that hand behind your back and open the door with the other, AA on your tail. 

You almost immediately trip on a swath of fabric. It chitters with static, and as you kick your legs free you notice another. And another. By the time your eyes adjust to the soft light of ED’s quarters it’s clear that the only danger here is suffocation via layers of ostentatious formal wear. 

The prince of the Empire is flopped bonelessly in a pile that you can only assume a wardrobifier puked up. Thin rings still glint on his fingers as he works them through the heiress apparent’s curls; your brain adds annoying little _shing_ noises for dramatic effect. 

She notices first, and when she raises her head and blinks lazily you realize how voyeuristic this probably looks. 

“Huh,” she says, and your back straightens like your instructor kicked it. _Your spine’s not broken yet, is it, Captor? Respect your position._

Beside you, AA’s at rigid attention. Her ears are flushed at the very tips. “Apologies, Highness, we—”

“Hurry up,” grumbles your charge, “you’re lettin all the cold out.”

ED’s voice is smooth as stone. Another thing your training didn’t mention: the salt-hewn timbre of a seadweller can not only tell you about their temper, it can also often reveal the presence or absence of a pale quadrant. Proof of this, in person, does a funny thing to your insides. 

AA flicks her wrist, and the door closes quietly. You both bow, but ED waves a hand. It’s a carefree dilution of the tight, graceful movement he uses at parties, the one that you scoff at and always try to see out of the corner of your eye anyway. 

“No need for that,” Feferi chimes, when it’s clear her moirail is too interested in burying his face in her shoulder to actually speak. “Stand easy! Eridan says you’ve been on the clock awl night.”

She stretches out the first half and pops the second – _aaaaaall nigh-t_ – but you don’t even feel patronized. “It’s in the contract, Highness,” you answer, unhooking your shoulders from your ears. 

The princess snaps her gills wetly; as ED pulls her back down, you notice a little trail of saltwater leading from the door you avoid extremely well. “Contracts. Shuck ‘em! Come re-lax, you two, for searious.”

“We,” AA tries, then clears her throat. “With respect, we—”

“We can’t,” you finish: your mouth is dry, your temples all fizzy. You wanna defuse so bad, that pile looks so comfy— “It isn’t protocol to—”

“Fuck protocol,” drawls ED, and you can feel the threat of accent on every rounding of his lips through your goddamn teeth. “Consider that a direct order. Or do you stop listenin to those when you’re off the clock?”

Feferi bonks him between the horns, but you feel yourself draw up again. Eridan is so full of fighting words it’s a goddamn miracle he has all his limbs and most of his pan cells. 

Horribly, your incredible comeback is a yawn, mangled between your fangs and pricking at the corners of your eyes. AA clucks her tongue like you’re five and cramming feeds well into day, running on mac ‘n’ cheese and half a sopor soak. The heiress, behind her, makes a fond little noise. “Scoot, Ampora.”

You’re the tallest one in the block and you are in way over your head. The tips of your horns thrum helplessly as the most powerful trolls planetside pull you and your moirail onto a particularly ugly set of overcoats. 

AA peels off your goggles, and her fingers against the divots of your throbbing temples are so familiar you could cry. Before she really digs in like the sadist you suspect she is, though, they still, and she glances at the royals, still tangled together with Feferi murmuring quietly against ED’s arm. “Do you mind if we...?”

“By awl means!” says the princess, before adding, after a pause, “What are we supposed to be minding?”

“Nothing,” you answer. “It’s nothing, just a cooldown. You’re too nice, AA.”

She shrugs wordlessly and refocuses her attention on the buzzing just inside your skull. Your spine guns towards the ground in relief. 

ED chooses this moment to ask, “Can I try?”

You’re so surprised you zap Aradia: she seems too interested in the question to notice or care—you’ve known each other long enough that your respective psionics are like a very long, very lax tickle fight. “Do you know how?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” He shimmies in FF’s lap (oh, no, you’ve nicknamed a Tyrian. If you could fire yourself, you would.) to stare at you. “Is there a fancy hemo-specific scalp massage I don’t know about?”

You are one foot into a particularly impressive headache, so you settle for a grunt and your own hands in your hair. It means you don’t see ED soften, which is fine by you. 

Less fine? His level of stubbornness that, you’re pretty sure, kept him alive before you floated onto the scene. 

His hands find the places AA shows him, maybe a little too eagerly on her part. His fingers are sure things when they touch you, to the point where they barely move when you yelp and accidentally let loose a charge. 

“Ow,” he says, like you insulted his shoes instead of attacking your charge, fuck, you really are a disgrace to the post—

“Your hands are freezing,” you protest. The pile is quickly absorbing whatever self-preservation your instructors didn’t drill out of you. “It’s like getting felt up by an ice cube tray.”

“Sure, right, lemme go stick em in a radiator for a hot minute. Unless you wanna do the honours?”

“Hop off, Ampora. I’m twenty hours into wriggler-sit duty—”

“And I’m twenty-one hours into watchin you literally burn out!”

You actually hear his teeth click when he snaps his mouth shut, fins tight. “Are you... _concerned_ about me?” It comes out slowly, not out of disbelief so much as a desperate attempt not to fuck up the heavy word. 

ED rolls his eyes: his hands are still raised towards you, like he’s forgotten they’re there. “Don’t look so shocked, Sol.”

“Heh, shocked.”

“Thanks, Megido.” Eridan lowers one palm for a high-five before continuing. “D’you remember the party last quarter? The one with that new trading zone or whatever—”

“Zone seven-three-twelve, initiated per Treaty Epsilon,” FF offers. 

“Sure, yes.” AA’s high-five is shifted behind him for his moirail to join in. “There was a breach.”

You sigh, blinking sparks away. “I know about the breach, ED.” Everyone did. It was one of your less stellar career moments. 

“Yes,” Eridan repeats, “’cause you stopped it.”

Perimeter scan four registered an anomalous body in the southern wing. You’d had less than two seconds to throw refractory defenses in front of him before the sniper fired. AA had scooped up the heiress and her snacks before your aurals remembered how to register noise again.

They hadn’t even bothered to discipline you; you’d tacked on more duties than there were hours in a planetary rotation.

Any argument you might have had is starving for some other manifestation. Even Aradia and Feferi have meticulously arranged the nearest cloaks around themselves to better watch you. 

God, you hate being watched. It’s what let AA convince you to take the guard tests in the first place, a job where you were the one doing all the watching. 

“You listenin?”

ED’s hands find your temples again, and you want to say no, you want to say you spend your waking hours and most of your dreaming ones running an internal white noise machine just to avoid hearing the uppity singsong of his voice. But his fingers dig in at the scar tissue around your eyes, and all you do is kind of fizzle at him. 

“Your reaction time,” says Eridan, “saved all of the asses. The only casualties were scorch marks on the mess floor and Fef’s foot when someone accidentally stepped on it runnin out.”

AA glares at Feferi. “You told me you broke a toe clearing out dead coral in your tank!” 

“I lied!” replies the princess cheerfully. “It healed quick anywaves.” 

“There you go. We got no reason to resent either a you.” ED does not let up: you can feel your pulse quiet enough to let your usual chorus of voices back in. How relaxing. 

“The opposite, reely.” At some point, your eyes have closed, and FF’s voice bubbles distantly. Your focus narrows comfortably—this is nothing like AA’s pale check-ins, the hands are the tiniest bit calloused and unwavering. Like if he tries hard enough, ED can pick you completely apart. 

You guess that’s what it is, someone caring that fiercely about you. It doesn’t suck as much as you thought it would. 

Your built-up pressure gauge drops; the reader affixed to your uniform chimes a cute little song ensuring your ongoing relative stability. Nice to know something is in your favour, every now and then. Eridan scoffs at it a little, moving to your horns when AA points it out. More static surrounds his fingers like extra jewelry. His fins flick — down-up — but he doesn’t look like he minds. You’re too blissed to resent him for it just now. Maybe you’ll try again tomorrow. 

ED’s hands are replaced by his lips against your hair, and your internal monologue starbursts. 

The prince’s moirail is gossiping with yours, you think, chatting about something something need to keep her updated on any fractures, Highness, yes I minnow it’s not technically in my dispatch notes, I just—yes I know I heard it too, Highness. Frankly, you’re impressed you caught that much, over your sad little purr, the reader dinging away data to your higher-ups, and ED mumbling something against your hair—

“What?” You raise your head, squinting through your sparks. 

Eridan kisses you. It is short, because you zap him a little harder on reflex, but it’s better than any pay you might have been given for this shit, in another life. 

You’re sinking back into the clothes, content to let your body attempt more than 45 minutes of undrugged naptime, when ED says, “I said thank you, if you gotta know.”

“I deduced as much,” you reply, and get your training take a coffee break for the rest of the day. 


End file.
